The Courier, the Freight Broker and Funny Frolics

The transport industry isn’t just about the haulage of stuff from ‘A’ to ‘B’. It’s also a powerful source of humorous stories that a freight broker will often share, given half the chance.

Here is a selection – judge for yourself whether you think they’re true or just the product of the over-active imagination of a freight broker one wet and grey day!

Handy with a fuel tank

The driver of rig once had to be rescued by the local Fire Department when he got his hand stuck in his tank. Ok, maybe not worthy of worldwide headline news but two things come to mind: how on earth did he get his hand in there, and why was he trying?

Now you see him, now you don’t

One courier was working with a partner on their way to make a delivery when the partner suddenly noticed that he was alone in the vehicle. Much as he admired his partner’s vanishing trick from behind the wheel, he quickly became pre-occupied with bringing the now driverless vehicle to a safe stop. The driver came running up frantically behind, fortunately relatively unhurt, having apparently ‘fallen out’ of the vehicle while turning a sharp corner. How do you fall out of a vehicle while driving it? It perhaps shall remain a mystery…

Round and round we go

One freight broker tells an amusing tale of a courier who was asked to take an urgent package to a fairly distant destination. Setting off early, he’d got more than half way there when he received a cell call saying that the shipper had made a terrible mistake and actually addressed the parcel to another office in their company rather than to the correct delivery address. He was then given the correct address – not only back in his hometown but actually his own personal home address. Yep, the package was, in fact, for his wife. Just how unlucky can you get?

Vous parlez français?

One freight-forwarding assistant had a great grasp of the French language, painstakingly studied over many years. Unfortunately his knowledge of geography wasn’t quite on the same level. This came to light when he bitterly complained that he couldn’t get an answer to his beautifully constructed emails in French to an overseas office. Unfortunately, he was trying to communicate with Hamburg – a city he thought was in France when, of course, it’s in Germany and a place where, perhaps unsurprisingly, they speak German. Did nobody, in the entire freight broker office, have a wall map of the world?

Super service

One driver arrived home one evening shortly before Halloween, to be told his freight broker boss had called and left a message that he should go into the office the following morning in costume for a team publicity photo. Putting on his skeleton costume, used with his young kids trick-or-treating, he duly reported in. The boss was less than amused. He’d actually left a message about the “uniform” (rarely used by the drivers on a day-to-day basis) not “costume”, as he intended the photo as part of a major advertising campaign.